Man of the house

When you’ve spent years as the head of a household, your day-to-day life gets built around the needs, routines, and expectations of other people. 

You tell yourself these rhythms are yours because you’ve been part of them for so long. But when you step out of that life and into a place where it’s just you, it’s jarring to realize how much of your time and energy was decided by others. 

At first, the absence of that rhythm is deafening. You reach for routines that don’t exist anymore, and it feels like you’re moving through space without gravity. 

But that emptiness becomes a kind of relief. The old rhythms begin to fall away, and in the quiet, what’s left is just… you.

Raw, unfiltered, with only your own habits and impulses to follow. Slowly, like figuring out a new language, your own routines start to emerge. Simple things that feel true in a way that had no room to breathe before.

Separating meant a lot of hard choices. I left my dog behind, at my wife’s request. My vinyl and turntable, something that always brought me back to myself, is still at the other house. Things I’d taken for granted as “mine” were suddenly missing. 

You start with what you have, and you feel the sacrifice in those absences. What used to sound like resignation now feels like reassurance. Despite what you left behind, you’re still here. Becoming whole again.

In the rental house I’m in now, the freedom to fill the space with what I want, as I want, is grounding.

I get to choose what goes on the walls now. The posters from concerts I’ve been to—the ones that would have been tucked away in a closet before—are hung up. It’s strange how a few pieces, carefully chosen and placed, start to make this place feel all mine. 

A reflection of my current frequency. And in those details, I feel a quiet comfort, the beginning of a new rhythm.

The shift from loneliness to solitude is a path you carve by inches… 

You start with the pieces you have, and you find that absence isn’t emptiness—it’s the space where everything you actually need begins to grow. Without everyone else’s hum of routines, you finally get to listen to your own. 

And over time, you find them there, like a rhythm you’d lost track of but was there all along, waiting for the space to be heard.

Kevin

Don’t forget to check out the YouTube Channel & Podcast!

Watch on YouTube

Listen on Apple

Listen on Spotify